


and all the world shall hear

by glacialphoenix



Category: Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Genre: Community: ff_land, F/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:43:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacialphoenix/pseuds/glacialphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edward remembers Anna. Poetry: blank verse, sestina, and haiku.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all the world shall hear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairbreeze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbreeze/gifts).



** I   
**  
Here I preserve this tale; long may it last,  
enshrined in voice, and song, and melody.  
So long I have lamented: let me rest,  
let me pen my grief, gild it, and retell  
your story. So minstrels immortalize  
their loves - spin them into song, into tale,  
That all men may listen, and remember.  
I have but this one gift. Let me retain  
The memory of your voice, your hair, your smile,  
The way you danced. Let me inscribe your name  
in song, in story, in eternity.  
  
You should have been queen. Since this cannot be,  
In song let me preserve your memory.  
  
**II**   
  
He pens lyrics to her memory.  
Quill scrapes against parchment, scribing song,  
straining to catch her voice.  
The tune stills. He surrenders the illusion.  
The fragile image of her company  
slips away with the silence of his lute.  
  
Reconstructing her image with his lute,  
he stitches together the pieces of her memory,  
and the memory of her company.  
This is his bard’s gift: to speak, through song;  
to build again the exquisite illusion  
that she still lives; to hear her voice,  
  
to see her smile. He honours her with his voice.  
Night by lonely night he plays his lute,  
crafts, expertly, the storyteller’s illusion;  
etches deep in his words the living memory  
of she who died too soon. This is her song,  
her story. He will tell it again and again to company  
  
until they grow weary of his company.  
He has nothing left save his voice:  
prince of a destroyed kingdom, with only song  
with which to rebuild. He will play his lute;  
scribe faith and love and courage into memory,  
renew again the last desperate illusion  
  
of hope. He harbours no illusions;  
without her, he has none. Still, to company,  
to his people, he is hope and dream and memory,  
recording the history of those who have no voice,  
who (like her) have gone beyond. They revere his lute,  
treasure each note of his song;  
  
history bound in music, captured in song.   
And so her name will live. This is the one illusion  
he allows himself, when he takes up his lute  
to play. She will keep him company   
in the strains of music, when again he lends his voice  
to hope, to courage, to memory.   
  
He still sings her song; imagines her company;   
crafts, still, his illusions; binds, always, the echoes of his voice,   
and the music of his lute, to the service of her memory.   
  
**III**   
  
he still plays his lute  
in the silence of the night  
all the world listens.   



End file.
